Miscellany

Howdy, all. A quick update so as not to keep my audience in suspense. The week was pretty fantastic in that I only had to work 3 hours a day due to finals for the middle school students that usually populate our later classes. I guess I should take the time to mention exactly how my school works, as I don't think everybody's clear on it. So in Korea, you can work in one of two places if you're teaching English: at the public schools or private institutions, called hagwans. I work for a branch of a pretty well-known and popular hagwan. Now, since these are not actual schools, our hours are a little different. We teach 2 classes a day normally, with one starting at 4:30 pm and the other at 7:30 pm, so we're very much night people after a while. I usually don't wake up till 10 in the morning at the earliest. Also, our classes are pretty structured, so we tend not to have a lot of freedom or breathing room in our curricula, but the fact that we don't have to spend a lot of time prepping for class kinda makes up for that.

Anyways, not much work this week means more time to play! I guess I'm getting a little nostalgic for last summer at Riverbend's Summer Camp, as I spent a good amount of time hiking and getting out of the city. On Friday, Dan and one of the Korean staff, Mac, and I visited Beomeosa, where the most popular temple in Busan is. It was really cool to finally get out and see something so specifically Korean; I can't help it, I love the touristy stuff sometimes! It was really nice to get out and walk around too, and you don't really notice how used to the city and all its terrible pollution you are until you get out for a while and remember how clean air feels in your lungs. We also went for a nice hike to the highest temple in the area, which means that we crawled up a terrible, steep face of the mountain to get to a place that wasn't really much different from the rest. But I begrudgingly admit that the view was great. One cool thing of note that Mac told us was that the statues of devils in my photo album are placed at the entrance to the temple. They're supposed to be devil kings of sorts, and when you pass by them, any evil spirits attached to you are instead pulled onto the statues.

That night, we had our welcome party for the branch, which meant we got fed and drunk on the company! And norebong! That's Korean karaoke, for you uncultured swine that weren't in the know. I also tagged along with John, one of the head teachers at my branch, for a Canada Day celebration last nite. I'm not exactly sure why, but there are a crapload of Canadians that ship out here to teach English, so I've heard that Canada Day is a fun time, but unfortunately, it was raining yesterday and that sort of put a damper on things. I guess I'll just have to grab my hockey stick and celebrate privately with a bottle of syrup and a Celine Dion concert.

So today, I decided to bring things down a bit. Once I got up and around, I grabbed my bag and headed to the hills. Elissa, the other head teacher at our school, mentioned that there were some nice trails just past the main city area, provided you don't mind hopping walls and dodging rabid dogs. As a side note, the dogs here are all small and yippy and terrible. Except in my belly! That's right, we went out last weekend and ate dog. Not bad, a little like pork, but very expensive. Oh, get over it, you damn hippy. Anyways, I went for a hike to see what I could find and ended up in this awesome park area that runs all up and down the mountain. I hiked there for a couple of hours and ended up with some gorgeous views of the city. It was just what the doctor ordered, too, since it was great exercise and very cathartic. I tried to get some good pics up there too, including one where you can almost see my home! No, I'm not telling you where I live, creepy stalker dude. After that, I met up with Dan and Mac and another Korean staff person at a cafe down the way. At the place, they had this thing that's popular around here called Doctor Fish. What it is is a big tub full of little bitty fishies. You put your feet inside and they swarm around and feast on your foot fungus and dead skin and whatnot. Weird, no? Well, it was pretty fun nonetheless, although we kinda just walked up without paying and jumped in. Yeah, I'm that guy, the big stupid foreigner.

So that's that. Not sure what else to lay on you, but my mind grapes are currently tapped out. I'll get something good for next time.

Good Times in Busan

P.S. My epic battle with Trash Man came to an end this week, since I walked down with my garbage perfectly sorted. He walked out expecting to throw down, but I impressed him and he tipped his hat and rode off into the sunset of his booth. Take that, Korea!